It’s one of the most highly anticipated days of the year in roller derby — WFTDA Tournaments seeding day! Today, the WFTDA released the latest rankings of its member leagues, which reflect games played through June 30, 2018 and are used to determine the seeding for the roller derby postseason including WFTDA Playoffs and the new Continental Cups.

The 2018 WFTDA Continental Cups and International Playoffs and Championships tournaments showcase women’s flat track roller derby’s top athletes and teams on the track and on WFTDA.tv, creating some of the most competitive match-ups of the year.

Since the development of the WFTDA, our postseason competitive structure has continued to evolve with our ever-growing global sport. In 2015, WFTDA membership voted to restructure the postseason tournaments to provide a regional competitive structure called Continental Cups while keeping a global competitive structure intact with Playoffs and Championships. 2018 is the inaugural year for the Continental Cups. The WFTDA’s competitive events are hosted around the world with different host leagues and cities each year. Teams are assigned to tournaments using competitive “S-Curve” seeding, a structure that was also approved by WFTDA membership.

Seeding the Postseason Brackets

The 2018 postseason is organized using a competitive S-curve seeding system for all brackets. The top four ranked teams automatically received an invitation and top seeding at the International WFTDA Championships. Following this invitation, the next 24 ranked teams were seeded into two Playoffs tournaments. If a team declined their invitation, the next-ranked team was moved into their spot and a team from the Continental Cups was moved up to Playoffs. Once all the Playoffs spots were filled, the next eligible teams were seeded regionally into their respective Continental Cup. If a team declined this invitation, the next eligible team from that region was offered a spot. For information on tournament policy, including the seeding process, read more here.

This year, teams from Australia and New Zealand declined invitations to the North America West Continental Cup citing inability to finance the required international travel. WFTDA is committed to building competitive play support for that region, as well as for South America, with the hope of organizing a Continental Cup in these regions after 2019. In addition to this, teams from North America also declined invitations to the A Coruña tournament and two leagues, V-Town Derby Dames and Wasatch Roller Derby, did not meet the four sanctioned games requirement necessary to be invited to tournaments, which allowed several teams under the usual rankings cut off for Continental Cups room in the bracket to compete.

2018 WFTDA Continental Cups

The WFTDA Continental Cups are member-league run and provide a regional, bracketed competition structure based on WFTDA Rankings. The system is flexible enough to scale up as roller derby grows and changes around the world. The WFTDA will add or remove regional Cups as needed and will set up a bracket structure for each that best reflects the rankings spread of each region.

The regions are currently North America East, North America West, Europe, Central/South America, Asia Pacific, and Africa.

In 2018, WFTDA Continental Cups will be held in the following three locations:North America East Cup: August 17-19, 2018, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Hosted by Kalamazoo Derby Darlins.North America West Cup: August 24-26, 2018, Omaha, Nebraska. Hosted by Omaha Rollergirls.European Cup: October 27-28, 2018, Birmingham, United Kingdom. Hosted by Birmingham Blitz Dames.

Regions without a Cup are assigned to the closest region: Asia Pacific to the North America West Cup, South America to the North America East Cup, and Africa to the European Cup. In 2018, the North America Cups are 12-team brackets and the European Cup is an 8-team bracket.

2018 International WFTDA Playoffs

For the first WFTDA Playoffs weekend, a new and dynamic WFTDA Apprentice league, As Brigantias Roller Derby, will be hosting in their seaside city of A Coruña, Spain. The second Playoffs of the season shift down south when the 2012 International WFTDA Championships hosts, the Atlanta Rollergirls, bring the WFTDA community to Atlanta, Georgia once again.

These four teams will be joining the WFTDA, our hosts Big Easy Rollergirls, and hundreds of derby fans in New Orleans, Louisiana, November 9-11 at the Lakefront Arena.

Tickets to the 2018 International WFTDA Championships go on sale July 23, and our WFTDA.tv postseason watch pass, which includes WFTDA Continental Cups and the International Playoffs and Championships series, goes on sale July 31.